Successful ultrasound scanning relies strongly on the training and experience of the user. To avoid artifacts, the user has to place the probe in the right position, i.e., to find a good acoustic window, for imaging. Conventionally, this is done solely based on real-time ultrasound images displayed onscreen. Although experienced users are usually capable of recognizing image degradation, and of improving image quality accordingly by moving the probe to a better position, less experienced users might acquire compromised images because of inferior hand-eye coordination and less awareness of artifacts. Acquisition of a set of standard views of a body organ of interest is a challenging task for healthcare workers having little or no background in radiology.
“Real-Time Scan Assistant for Echocardiography”, Snare, S. R. et al., IEEE Transactions in Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (2012) (hereinafter “the Snare publication”) describes an image-processing approach applied to two-dimensional (2D) four-chamber cardiac images to output a metric of the quality of the obtained view.